SALARY NEGOTIATION COACHING - PORTLAND, OREGON

Ask for $30,000 more

without a competing offer,

and without risking the one

you already have.

I’m Renata Voss. I ran compensation at two Portland tech companies and approved 600 offers before I switched sides of the table. Now I coach senior engineers, designers, PMs, nurse practitioners and partner-track lawyers through the eleven minutes that decide their next four years. Five Tuesdays, live, forty seats.

Join Cohort 19 - $1,900

Watch a real mock negotiation, 12 min

Starts Tuesday, January 12

26 of 40 seats taken

A woman in a black suit posing for a picture

1,180 clients since March 2019. Median lift $34,800. Two rescinds in six years, both after the client had already signed.

You already tried four things. Here is where each one falls over.

Never Split the Difference, Getting to Yes, and the Reddit thread you have already read twice. None of it is wrong. All of it stops one step before the moment your voice actually has to work.

Never say the first number

Recruiters are trained to ask twice and then anchor anyway. Nobody hands you a line for the third ask, which is the one that decides your band.

Send a polite email asking for more

Email hands your case to a compensation committee you’ll never speak to. In my client data the lift comes on a call 8 times out of 10.

Get a competing offer first

Excellent, if you’ve got three months. Most people reach me with six working days between the verbal offer and the deadline.

Just be confident

Confidence is downstream of a sentence you’ve said out loud nine times. We do the reps in weeks 3 and 5, on camera, with someone who negotiates for a living.

a wooden table topped with papers and a pen

I approved 600 offers before I ever asked for more money myself.

For six years I sat on the company side. I built the bands, I wrote the approval memos, and I watched two candidates with near-identical resumes start $52,000 apart because one of them asked a second time and the other one said thank you.

two candidates, identical resumes, $52,000 apart

When I moved into a director role in 2018 I finally negotiated my own offer and got $31,000 more in eleven minutes. There was one catch though. I only pulled that off because I’d already read the 600 memos, so I knew which sentence lands on which desk. You haven’t read them, and there’s no honest way for you to. That’s the whole difference between us, and it’s a five-week difference rather than a personality one.

Renata Voss, founder of The Counteroffer Lab

6 years

Head of compensation at two Portland tech companies. 600+ offers approved and priced.

1,180 clients

720 seats across 18 cohorts of the Lab since March 2019, plus 460 people one to one.

90 days out

Every number on this page comes off a signed offer letter a client sent back, checked 90 days after their start date.

THE THREE LEVERS

Base salary is the most expensive dollar in the building. Three cheaper levers move faster.

Why? Because base resets your whole band, it compounds for every year you stay, and it needs a second signature from someone who has never met you. Level, sign-on and an equity refresh all get decided in the same week by the same hiring manager, and two of the three clear with no committee at all. Week 2 is where we work out which lever your offer is actually sitting on.

Level, before HR is looped in

A single level bump is worth $28,000 to $70,000 a year and it gets settled in one conversation with the hiring manager. Ask after the recruiter is looped in and you’re asking four people instead of one.

Sign-on absorbs the no

When a band is genuinely capped, sign-on is the pocket a recruiter is already pre-approved to reach into. Median lift across my clients on this lever alone: $22,000.

The equity refresh nobody asks for

A refresh grant gets signed off by the same hiring manager in the same week and it never touches the comp committee. Three in ten of my clients get one, and every one of them asked after the base conversation was already closed.

Person holding a black click pen over printed documents on a dark desk

Five Tuesdays. You leave with the actual sentences.

Sessions run 6:00 to 7:30pm Pacific and the recording goes up within three hours. Mock negotiations get booked separately across 18 slots spread over the whole week, including two early ones at 7am and 8am Pacific, so nobody has to take one at an hour that doesn’t work.

WEEK 1

Read your own band

Bring the job post and the recruiter’s first email. We reverse-engineer the range they’re working inside using levels.fyi, public filings and two recruiter contacts of mine. Clients land within about $6,000 of the real ceiling.

WEEK 2

The number and the reason

You write one anchor and one justification, then we cut every hedge word out of it. Homework is saying it out loud to a stranger who doesn’t care about your career.

WEEK 3

Mock one, with a real recruiter

Twenty minutes on camera with a working in-house recruiter from a company of about 2,000 people. It’s uncomfortable. That’s the reason it works in the room later.

WEEK 4

The three pushbacks

Budget is fixed. The comp committee decides. This is our best and final. You get a written, rehearsed answer to each one before you need it, plus the phrasing that keeps the ask warm instead of adversarial.

WEEK 5

Mock two and the close

Same recruiter, harder script, then we build your six-day calendar with the exact send time for every email between the verbal offer and your signature.

What you actually walk out with.

Four artefacts from Cohort 18, shown with the clients’ permission. This is the section the archetype exists for, and the reason a coach buys this template instead of a course-card grid.

a woman in glasses is looking at a laptop

MOCK TWO - 14:02

Mock two, minute 14

The frame where Dev hedges, I stop the tape, and he says the number again flat. Both of your own tapes come to you as downloadable files, and most people rewatch the first one the night before the real call.

BAND SHEET - SENIOR PRODUCT DESIGNER, PORTLAND

levels.fyi p50

$186,000

levels.fyi p75

$214,000

10-K filing, 2026

$228,500

Recruiter quote, week 1

$241,000

Your band sheet, in red pen

The levels.fyi pull, two public filings and a recruiter quote, marked up live on the week 1 call. What you’re looking at is somebody’s actual ceiling being found.

SCRIPT LIBRARY - PAGE 9 OF 41

17. I hear you, and I believe the band is where you say it is. Can we look at the level instead of the base?

18. If the base is genuinely capped, what is sign-on already approved to cover this quarter?

19. What would it take on your side to get this to two hundred and fifteen?

The script library, page 9

Forty-one responses, word for word. Page 9 is the four answers for when they tell you the offer is already at the top of the band.

THE SIX-DAY OFFER CALENDAR

MON

Verbal offer lands. Thank them. Ask for it in writing.

TUE

Written offer arrives. Reply: reading it tonight.

WED

The call. Anchor once, give the reason, then stop talking.

THU

Do not reply.

FRI

They come back. Confirm level and sign-on in writing.

MON

Sign.

The six-day calendar

Every email between verbal offer and signature with its send time. Thursday is the row where the only instruction is to not reply.

REPORTED OUTCOMES SINCE MARCH 2019

$41.6M, and where every dollar of it came from

Every figure below comes from the 873 clients (74%) who sent a signed offer letter back 90 days after their cohort ended. The 307 who never replied aren’t counted as wins and aren’t counted as losses. The mean lift works out at about $47,700, pulled up by a handful of equity-heavy wins at the top, which is exactly why the median underneath is the number to plan around.

$41.6M

in base, sign-on and refresh negotiated across 873 reported outcomes since March 2019

$34,800

median lift on a first offer, measured 90 days after the start date

89%

of the 604 who confirmed they ran the whole script cleared the first number

11 days

median time from the last session to a signed offer letter

What the $1,900 actually buys

Two recorded mock negotiations

With working in-house recruiters, not classmates role-playing. Twenty minutes each, on camera, and both files are yours to keep.

The script library, 41 responses

Word for word, including the four answers for when they tell you the offer is already at the top of the band.

Your band research, done with you

You do the digging in week 1 while I’m on the call. You leave with a written range and the three sources it came from.

The six-day offer calendar

Every email and its send time, from the verbal offer through to signature, plus the day you deliberately go quiet.

Thursday office hours, for good

Forty-five minutes a week, open to alumni permanently. Nine people came last week and four of them were from the 2022 cohorts.

The rescind answer, in writing

The two cases in 1,180 clients where an offer got pulled, what caused both, and the phrasing that keeps you nowhere near it.

The people who did it while scared

I used the week 3 language to ask for the level instead of the salary and got it on one call. $46,000 above the verbal, plus an equity refresh I didn’t know you were allowed to ask for.

Marcus T.

staff engineer, Portland

I was sure they’d walk. They came back in forty minutes with $19k on base and $30k of sign-on. The only difference was that I stopped explaining myself after I said the number.

Ivy L.

product designer, Seattle

The second mock is where it landed. I heard myself hedge, Renata stopped the tape, and she made me say it again. Two weeks later I signed for $28,500 more.

Dev S.

senior PM, Chicago

I signed up assuming half of it wouldn’t apply to me. The band research was different for a hospital system. The six-day calendar was identical. $16,200 and an extra week of PTO.

Aisling M.

nurse practitioner, Denver

Two offers pulled in 1,180 clients. Both people asked again after they had already signed.

One cohort. Forty seats. $1,900.

Cohort 19 starts Tuesday, January 12. Five sessions, 6:00 to 7:30pm Pacific, recorded if you miss one. Pay once or take three payments of $650 with no interest. I don’t take a percentage of your raise, and you never have to show me your offer letter. About three quarters of clients send it anyway once they’ve signed, which is where every number on this page came from.

COHORT 19 - STARTS TUESDAY, JANUARY 12

1,900

or three payments of $650, no interest

Take a seat in Cohort 19

Seats update live, 26 of 40 taken.

What you pay

$1,900 once, or 3 x $650. Two seats in every cohort are free for people laid off in the last 90 days. Email me and say so, no proof needed.

What comes back

Median client lift is $34,800 at 90 days. The guarantee sits at $10,000 on purpose, well under that. $10,000 is the number I’ll bet my own fee on for anyone who does the reps, rather than the number I expect you to get. Run the full script on a live offer within six months, clear less than $10,000, and I refund the whole $1,900 on your word.

Who I turn away

If your next offer conversation is more than eight weeks out, I’ll put you on the list instead of taking your money. That’s roughly one in five people who email me.

Renata Voss, founder of The Counteroffer Lab

The six things people email me before they join

Can they rescind the offer if I push back?

In 1,180 clients it’s happened twice, and both times the person made a demand after signing rather than an ask before it. A single warm ask with a reason attached has never cost one of my clients an offer. Week 4 is entirely about the phrasing that keeps it that way.

Will my new manager resent me on day one?

This is the fear I get emailed about more often than rescinds, and it’s the more expensive one, because it’s about the eleven months after the eleven minutes. Your hiring manager negotiated their own offer and expects you to negotiate yours. The people who don’t ask are the ones who get quietly re-levelled at the first review instead. What causes resentment is the shape of the ask, and week 4 gives you the version that keeps it a conversation about the band rather than about you. Four people out of 1,180 have reported a cold start, and all four had gone back for a second ask after they’d already signed.

I already have the offer and six days left. Am I too late?

About 40% of every cohort is negotiating live during the five weeks, so you’d be in the majority. We reorder your sessions around your deadline. Email me the timeline and I’ll tell you honestly whether to join or book one session instead.

I’m not in tech. Does any of this transfer?

The levers are the same in hospital systems, law firms and agencies. Only the band research changes, which is why week 1 runs one to one. Roughly a quarter of every cohort works outside tech, and that quarter is named at the top of this page for a reason.

What if I can’t make Tuesday evenings?

The recording goes up within three hours and the mocks come out of 18 slots spread across the week. Four people in the last cohort watched every session on recording from Berlin and took both mocks live at 5pm their time, which is 8am here. The mocks are the part you can’t do on a recording, so we move them to your clock instead.

Is this the negotiation book I already own, in video form?

Books hand you principles, and you already agree with all of them. What you need is the sentence for the moment your voice shakes, and someone willing to stop the tape when you hedge. Reading was never the hard part.

Empty seminar room with sunlight casting shadows across the floor

The next time a recruiter says a number, you will already have the sentence.

Cohort 19 starts Tuesday, January 12. If you’re inside an offer conversation right now, send me your timeline and I’ll reply within a day telling you whether these five weeks land in time or whether you should wait for March 2. I’d rather lose the sale than sell you the wrong five weeks.

Take a seat in Cohort 19

Twenty six of forty seats taken

Or send me your timeline first

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